The Singles Jukebox

Per the Punjabi Music subreddit: “‘Khutti’ doesn’t really have one meaning and can be used to mean amazing or larger than life or trouble or similar things”…

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[5.80]

Nortey Dowuona: From what I’ve read, Diljit Dosanjh seems both very nice and deeply ambitious and has spent the last two decades becoming a star of Punjab bhangra and cinema. He began in 2009 with The Next Level, produced by Honey Singh, as well as his lead role in the Lion of Punjab in 2011, in which he and Honey Singh teamed up to make him available to pop rap, opening the door for his following attempts at crossover. However, despite his desires to create a crossover hit on the level of “Gangnam Style,” he had yet to do so, having worked with several other producers but failing to break through as a musician. Finally, he seems to be on the verge, starring in the biopic of the legendary Amar Singh Chamkila for Netflix, as well as this song. A quartet led by HARV, GENT!, John and Pontus make the drums bounce and the synth riff twinkle ever 4 measures, enough for Larry Jacks and Raj Ranjodh as well as Saweetie to team up and make Diljit Dosanjh dazzle.
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Katherine St. Asaph: This Punjabi crossover bangs in the way a meteor could be said to bang as it strikes Earth. Diljit’s vocals and energy are colossal, and Saweetie mostly holds her own against the force of this, despite occasionally sounding unsure how she got there.
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Leah Isobel: I find Saweetie’s presence on this sort of baffling. Like, I get that she signifies “hip-hop” and “women” and “United States” in a broad sense – so from a business perspective, she makes sense – but nothing about her performance or presence goes beyond the vague gesture. Her concept-free smoothness doesn’t complement Diljit’s specific rhythmic and vocal choices, either; instead, she just irons out a song that’s already too frictionless. I’m not mad at it, but I don’t feel anything either.
[5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: “From the Bay to Punjab” is going to be huge for the Instagram captions of a couple dozen people I knew in college; I wish there was a bit more Bay Area styling on this as opposed to the Atlanta-as-nowhere trap beat by Gent! (a Lil Yachty associate, tragically). Everything here is adequate but not quite satisfying — Dosanjh seems less comfortable as a yelped than he does as a R&B-leaning loverman, Saweetie does the same thing she’s done for the past half decade, fossilized in an eternal pre-pandemic summer.
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Jessica Doyle: The execution’s on the boring side, but I like the concept. Also how Saweetie says, “Y’all know what time it is,” because she informed us it was 8 a.m. local time two minutes earlier.
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Taylor Alatorre: Even more of a blatant cut-and-paste job than these cross-border collabs often are; Saweetie framing her verse as the byproduct of a 12-hour red-eye flight is some savvy expectation management. Diljit, or at least his producers, are fluent enough in the lingua franca of trap music to make each part work fine on its own, even if hand-off between the two is unceremonious.
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Ian Mathers: Feels oddly like a mirror universe counterpart to Truth Hurts’ “Addictive,” and if it’s not quite the banger that one is, it’s still pretty good!
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Isabel Cole: On first listen I thought I wanted this to be faster, but after a few more I came to appreciate the unhurried way the beat muscles forward.
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Rachel Saywitz: A perfectly fine Punjabi banger with an unsurprisingly middling Saweetie verse. That downward vocal flourish in the chorus gets more and more entrancing as I listen.
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Tim de Reuse: Very little is exchanged in this cultural exchange. Dosanjh gives a spirited performance, but the grooveless, sparse beat simply does not function underneath his Bhangra cadence; he is syncopated and energetic, while his surroundings plead for Drake-style triplets. The overall effect is that of a crude mashup that could’ve stayed on Soundcloud, but at least he’s trying to keep us entertained. Saweetie, on the other hand, is on autopilot, bringing nothing specific other than a few off-handed geographic references. And, hey, on that note — why would you drop that you’re getting a visa? Applying for an Indian tourist visa is not a glamorous experience. It’s mostly filling out forms for hours on a site that boasts compatibility with Internet Explorer 9. It still uses the HTML <marquee> tag.
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